5001 - TTR-New Teacher Induction
Course Description
This course is for participants who have completed the Temple Teacher Residency. For two years after graduating from the Residency, teachers will participate in the New Teacher Induction program, to support their continued learning and development The New Teacher Induction has three foci. The first focus is on task evaluation, selection, design and modification with a goal of being able to identify and then more regularly use high-cognitive demand tasks. The second focus is on teacher questions with a goal of being able to identify and more regularly use questions that maintain the demand of high-quality tasks and promote classroom discussion. The third focus is to explore student responses and what information they can provide and how they can be used to make inferences about student thinking.
Course Outline
We will have 15 meetings, each of 1.5 hours in length. They will happen every other week from the first week of the Fall semester to the final week of the spring term. In the table below, we describe activities, alignment with objectives, and any assessment activities.
Week 1: Introductions, Watch video of classroom, notice and wonder protocol. Discuss criteria of high-quality instruction.
Week 2: Watch same video, focus on the task that students were asked to do. Watch a second video. Notice and wonder to compare the tasks. Discuss criteria of a high-quality task and the relationship to instructional goals and objectives. Introduce task-rubric.
Week 3: Bring a task you (participant) have used with students and a task you are planning to use in the near future. Analyze them with the task rubric. Suggest one change you could have made to increase the level of cognitive demand. Commit to making one change in your future instruction.
Week 4: Task analysis workshop. Bring and find (during meeting) tasks that you might use with students. Analyze them with tool. Commit to regularly analyzing tasks prior to use.
Week 5: Watch video of classroom, first analyze task. Then notice and wonder about teacher-moves. Report on task-analysis practice, changes in teaching practice
Week 6: Watch video of classroom, analyze task, focus on teacher questions. Watch second video of classroom, analyze task, focus on teacher questions. Notice and wonder comparison of questioning practices. Introduce questioning frameworks, discuss.
Week 7: Watch classroom video and use questioning frameworks to analyze teacher practices. Discuss one or two ways to improve the practice of the observed teacher.
Week 8: Bring a lesson that you’re about to teach. Analyze task. Script some questions of different types and that could reduce and maintain the cognitive demand of the task. Commit to asking a range of questions when you teach the lesson, at least one of which should be an open question with high demand.
Week 9: Watch video, analyze task, teacher questioning. Notice and wonder about student responses.
Week 10: Bring a lesson that you’re about to teach. Analyze task. Script some questions of different types and that could reduce and maintain the cognitive demand of the task. Discuss responses you would expect from students. Write one follow-up question that is of high-cognitive demand. Commit to asking at least one follow-up question of a student.
Week 11: Report on questioning practice, changes in teaching practice
Week 12: Lesson planning workshop—plan a lesson, with questioning scripted, and student responses. Commit to teaching it, try to record some student responses
Week 13: Bring student responses—analyze them collectively for evidence of thinking and understanding.
Week 14: Revisit first lesson (week 3) and bring a new lesson that shows growth. Analyze each using the task-analysis framework. Explain differences and relate them to your instructional goals and objectives.
Week 15: Class and self-evaluation
Learner Outcomes
Objective 1: Teachers will be able to use Smith and Stein's framework to evaluate the potential demands of a task they might give to students. They will be able to justify their decision by explaining the meaning of the terms of the framework and how those terms are applied to the potential task.
Objective 1a: Teachers will select and implement higher-quality tasks in their instruction.
Objective 2: Teachers will be able to describe types of questions and the potential cognitive demand of those questions. Teachers will be able to describe pedagogical affordances and constraints of the different types of questions.
Objective 2a: Teachers will report using more high-demand and open questions in their classes.
Objective 3: Teachers will be able to interrogate the quality of a student response to a question.
Objective 3a: Teachers will report more commonly asking for responses with more depth.